Free Have a New Husband by Friday by Kevin Leman Page A

you got it cut nine weeks ago.
    Give Him a Little Credit
    Remember when I said that boys’ brains have much less sensory awareness than girls’ brains? Well, the same is true of men. One career woman in her early forties—I’ll call her Sue—came to see me because she was so frustrated with her husband’s amazing ability to live with debris. She came from a neatnik home, and it was driving her crazy.
    One morning she noticed that there was an empty toilet paper roll lying on the floor in one section of the master bathroom (which was only six feet by six feet). She decided to conduct an experiment. She dated the toilet paper roll and placed it back exactly where she’d found it. She wanted to see how long it would take her husband, Craig, to pick it up. After all, picking up after him wasn’t her job. He wasn’t a child—or was he?
    An entire week went by, and every morning Sue checked the bathroom and discovered that the toilet paper roll was still there, lying on the floor. A month went by, two months, three months, then four months—an entire season! Sue had found the toilet paper roll at the end of October, and it was now the end of February.
    Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. When Craig came home from work, she walked him into the bathroom and told him, “I’ve been conducting a test. Do you have any idea what the test might be?”
    Craig looked around. “You didn’t paint the walls, did you?”
    “No.”
    “The floor’s the same, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m sorry, I—”
    She lost her cool and snapped, “The toilet paper roll! Didn’t you notice it on the floor? Look, I dated it—October 30. It’s been lying here for four months!”
    Craig shrugged. “I’m sorry. I guess I just didn’t see it.”
    And when I asked him about it, he honestly hadn’t! That’s because when he went into the bathroom, he was focusing on getting one job done, and only one. He wasn’t noticing everything else in the periphery of his vision. But if Sue had said, “Hey, honey, would you mind picking up the toilet paper rolls from the floor when you change them? I’d really appreciate it,” then picking up that roll would have been on his radar. And it would have saved four months of stress on Sue’s part.
    Wendy, a stay-at-home mom with an at-home business, conducted a test of her own. It was driving her crazy that her husband, Allen, acted like she was the only one who could buy toothpaste. One time she watched Allen squeeze and squeeze a virtually empty tube, wondering when he’d get the clue and drive down to Walgreens to pick some up on his own.
    That never happened. Instead, Allen came downstairs one evening and said, “Wendy? I can’t get any more toothpaste out of the tube, and the boys need to brush their teeth. Do we have a new tube?”
    “I don’t know,” Wendy said. “Have you bought any lately?”
    Allen was about as perplexed as a husband could be. “No.” He laughed, as if buying toothpaste was the most bizarre thing he could imagine doing.
    “Well, then, I guess we’re out,” Wendy replied.
    Now, Allen might be simple, but he wasn’t simpleminded. He could tell by her tone that something was up, so he said, “How about if I go buy some?”
    “That’s a great idea,” Wendy said, thinking, Well, well, it’s about time. He’s finally getting it!
    At least, she thought it was a great idea until he came home with, in her words, “Galactic Blue Bubblemint Star Wars Toothpaste!”
    If you wait for your guy to notice you need something, you’ll be waiting a long time.
    I have to confess that, as a man, I sat stumped in my therapist’s chair. I wasn’t sure what the problem was. After all, she’d wanted Allen to buy the toothpaste, didn’t she?
    “Have you ever had to clean that stuff up?” Wendy half yelled at me in reply, as if I was simpleminded. “That blue gunk sticks to everything!”
    When Wendy bought toothpaste, she thought, What toothpaste will make the